Rusudan Khizanishvili – Rooms & Beings

68projects is pleased to present Rooms & Beings, the first solo exhibition in Berlin by Georgian artist Rusudan Khizanishvili.

Khizanishvili’s work balances between Georgian culture—rich in tradition—and a conceptually driven contemporary discourse on representation and its functions. The fourteen works on view were all created in 2020 while the artist was living in Tbilisi. They can be thematically divided into two interconnected groups: works centered on sacral transformations, and those featuring theatrically staged interactions within rooms. At the core of both is the human being and her identity.

Questions of selfhood, biology, cultural memory, myth, and the female body are central to Khizanishvili’s ongoing investigation. Her work demonstrates both maturity of purpose and a strong command of color. Rather than following expected narratives of post-Soviet identity, her paintings develop a powerful and distinctive visual language that addresses post-colonial questions in abstract terms, avoiding direct depictions of dominance and subjugation.

The roles and strength of women are recurring themes in her work. Her canvases often feature archetypal heroines in constant transformation. Drawing on the idea that every human carries genetic information from thousands of ancestors, Khizanishvili reflects on the immense layers of memory and identity embedded within the body. Unable to consciously process this accumulation, humans develop additional inner senses—creating new personas, animals, trees, oceans, and imagined worlds.

Though people may be physically confined to rooms, the artist suggests that internally we build vast landscapes, bridges, and passageways, traveling through dimensions of imagination. The fantastical beings depicted in the exhibition belong to these inner domains: partially invisible, yet always present.

Influenced by the duality of mind and spirit found in medieval art, Khizanishvili’s paintings form a kind of symbolic cathedral driven by imaginative tension. Some works connect directly to German Expressionism through emotional urgency, while others recall Outsider Art with their directness and free-flowing narratives. The human figure appears simultaneously as subject and object, larger and smaller than itself.

At a time when digital technologies increasingly replace human functions, Khizanishvili’s paintings search for new forms of being—ones grounded in touch, simple gestures, empathy, and hope, unmediated by screens. Her canvases can be read as symbolic anthropological blueprints for a new reality. Beings wander through rooms in search of meaning, mirroring our own search in the contemporary world.

Rusudan Khizanishvili (born 1979) lives and works in Tbilisi, Georgia. She holds two BFAs in Painting from the J. Nikoladze Art School and the Tbilisi State Academy of Art, and an MA in Film Studies from the Tbilisi State Academy of Art (2004).

Over the past fifteen years, she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the Museum of Modern Art Tbilisi, the Georgian Museum of Literature, the Tbilisi State Silk Museum, the Mark Rothko Foundation (Daugavpils, Latvia), Galerie Am Roten Hof (Vienna), Arundel Contemporary (UK), New Image Art Gallery (Santa Monica), Kunstverein Villa Wessel Iserlohn (Germany), Norty Paris, Triumph Gallery (Moscow), Assembly Room (New York), and Window Project (Tbilisi).

In 2015, Khizanishvili represented Georgia at the 56th Venice Art Biennale. Her works are included in the collections of the Georgian National Museum, the Breus Foundation (Moscow), and private collections including that of Stefan Simchowitz (Los Angeles).

Text by Nina Mdivani